Got an Older Kindle? Update Today or It Will Lose Its Wi-Fi

If you've got a forgotten Kindle hiding in a drawer somewhere, it's time to pull it out, charge it up, and turn it on. If you don't do it today or tomorrow, it won't be able to connect to Wi-FI in order to do relatively important things like download books, sync your library, or get more updates.

This update affects all Kindles from the Paperwhite 2012 and older (full list here), and is pretty easy to get. Kindles will automatically take update—even if they're asleep—so long as they're connected to Wi-Fi. The danger here is that if you have an old Kindle that hasn't been turned on in a while, so it's dead. Or one that's somewhere where it doesn't have Wi-Fi. In either case, just make sure it's on and connected to Wi-Fi and it should do the rest by itself. You'll know you are good when you see "03-2016 Successful Update."

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

If you missed your shot (hello there in the future), all hope is not lost. A Kindle that wasn't updated in time will throw the following error:

"Your Kindle is unable to connect at this time. Please make sure you are within wireless range and try again. If the problem persists, please restart your Kindle from the Menu in Settings and try again."